UPDATE: Wow… it was easier than I thought it would be. I was able to quickly get to the same level of functionality as that previous post in less than an hour. Here is the push message posted to Prowl app using the cellular shield by a python script running on the Raspberry Pi.

Setup config files

~/.vimrc

set expandtab "et"
set sw=4 "shiftwidth"
set smarttab "spaces for tabs ?"
set ts=4 "tabstop
set shiftround
"Indentations and line numbers
"set number "nu"
set autoindent
set cindent "ci"
set incsearch "incremental search
set hlsearch "highlight search
"line break - causes word granularity wrapping
set lbr
set wrap
"Folding
syntax on
syntax sync fromstart
set foldmethod=indent
filetype plugin indent on
syntax enable
"set invlist
set showmatch "sm"
set smartcase "scs no ignore case when pattern has uppercase
set backspace=2 "bs how backspace works at start of line
filetype on "filetype detection on
"dont indent when pasting with middle clicks
set paste
" Make shift-insert work like in Xterm
map
map!
set nocompatible "dont emulate bugs
" configure command line completion
set wildmode=list:longest,full
" setup status line
set statusline=%F%m%r%h%w\ [%{&ff}]\ [%Y]\ [%07l,%07v][%p%%]\ [%L]
set laststatus=2 " always show the status line

Serial port setup

console=ttyAMA0,115200 kgdboc=ttyAMA0,115200
And comment out the following from /etc/inittab file:
T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyAMA0 115200 vt100

You also might want to install minicom for monitoring:

$ sudo apt-get install minicom

To setup the serial port packages required for use with python:

$ sudo easy_install pyserial

Reboot time

As per my rough measurement it takes around 90-120 seconds for the raspberry pi to be able to accept ssh connections after initiating a reboot. I suspect that this is partly because of my slowish class 4 memory card. I was getting much quicker boot times with the 45MBps UHS-I SD card from my camera.

Change hostname

Update it in the following files and reboot:

$ sudo vim /etc/hostname /etc/hosts

And lastly

Once you are happy with your config remember to make a backup img of your card which you can restore if anything goes wrong.
A useful suggestion I found here was to zero out the free space to get better compression.

Webroll

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